Socialist Spain has offered Americans a glimpse of what socialist economics can bring, and perhaps a preview of New York City’s future, or that of the broader United States, should progressives and the Democratic Socialists of America gain more ground.

On Tuesday, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced that, in keeping with his government’s belief that housing is a “human right,” it had introduced legislation to bar evictions, freeze rents, and force landlords to continue leasing properties to tenants. The bill would also expand the country’s affordable-housing stock. 

"The coalition government has it clear, we said it from the beginning of the investigation, housing is a right and we will not let it become a product for speculation," the Spanish Prime Minister said, according to a translation." The texts that we present today are the result of that effort, an ambitious package of measures that incorporates different positions and that allows to build a sufficient parliamentary majority to combat that housing emergency."

"The measures that we have just approved pursue three objectives. The first of them is to protect those who need it the most, and that is why we prohibit the eviction of vulnerable people without a housing alternative until the end of 2030," Sánchez said. "We have also approved the extraordinary extension of two years for the rent contracts that are in force and to the current payment and we have frozen until 2028 the current rents that are above the reference price index, that is, they will remain stable and will not be able to be updated every year."

"The second objective is to end speculation and abuses in the housing market, and that is why we prohibit the speculative purchase by the so-called vulture funds."

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"And thirdly, we increase the supply of affordable housing in our country, and for this we have shielded the public housing park, which is managed by the state company Casa 47, so that it never ends up in private hands."

"The Government, therefore, has done its part," Sánchez added. "I have explained some of the measures that we have incorporated in this Royal Decree, we have listened, we have acted, and now it is up to the Parliamentary Groups, to the Congress of Deputies, to do their part. I ask the Parliamentary Groups, those who have shown their willingness to reach an agreement, that we are also empathetic with the citizens when they go to vote and that they put forward the interests of the people to the interests of the speculators."

That is the end of Spain’s housing market, or, more accurately, the end of anything remotely resembling a market, if the government follows through on its apparent effort to monopolize housing. 

The strength of a free market is that, in the overwhelming majority of cases, exchanges between individuals and businesses are voluntary. They rest on freedom, property rights, and the expectation that both parties will benefit. In Spain, and in other socialist systems, economic transactions increasingly rest on coercion: the threat of government punishment and, ultimately, fear. 

Spain’s government is forcing people into involuntary arrangements that benefit no one in the long run. Landlords who cannot collect a sustainable return will be unable or unwilling to maintain their properties. Builders will have little reason to finance new construction. And tenants, whom the policy is supposedly designed to protect, will eventually discover what happens when the profit motive is stripped from housing: fewer homes, declining quality, and properties that slowly crumble around them.